


A Thousand Times Good Night

by Orlha



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, F/M, Immortality, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 21:57:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12067761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orlha/pseuds/Orlha
Summary: He is cursed to walk the world until the end of time and she is cursed to die forever before 21 until one of them can break the curse. He tries and tries, then he finally succeeds.





	A Thousand Times Good Night

Suggested soundtrack:

 

Kakashi scrubs his arm in the sink. There is rage burning beneath his skin and self-loathing curdling at the base of his throat.

_You were supposed to protect her._

He scrubs, trying to remove the non-existent blood off his arm. His lungs are heaving as he scrubs harder, flecks of blood edging under his nails, bits of skin peeling off where the sponge has scoured it off. How many more times did he have to go through this? How many more times did he have to watch her die? To fall in love with her again and lose her?

The words that he can never voice out sit at the base of his throat like acid.

He’s so tired, so very tired and the worst part is that he can’t even end it. 

Kakashi slides down the wall, slamming his head against the blue tiles with an exhausted heave. His henge wavers and with a twist of his chakra, he dispels the henge that he had been wearing for a better part of the decade. He still looks like himself when his family was still alive, when Sakura was still alive, when he was still _killable_ , he still looks the same as he did two kami damned hundred years ago. Kakashi palms his face, feeling the scar that runs across his eye. 

Funny how his original self has the same identical wound, except with the curse, his eye never did get destroyed. The sharingan eye wasn’t an add-on Kakashi had wanted. 

Not then, not now.

He had been here before Konoha was founded, he had been here during the clan wars where the Uchihas fought, he had been here when the tailed beasts roamed the lands. The Uchihas had never been the kindest clans, proud and arrogant. Like he was, like he _is_. 

In the forest, he had been so arrogant of his own skills to get her out alive, that he never once considered that Sakura would have thrown herself in front of him. That Sakura, that _Rin,_ in this lifetime was far more reckless and uncaring of her own damn life.

 _“You will regret the day you broke your vows. I curse you. I curse you, Hatake -- to walk the earth until she can live past twenty-one, and you-” Blood spilling down her face_ _as she smiles. “-Hatake Sakura, I curse you to always die before twenty-one.” She laughs, in spite of the seal sucking her into it._

He picks up the lamp and swings it with a loud scream, slamming it repeatedly into the wall. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

Tears pour down Kakashi’s face. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid man. You deserve to walk the earth alone until you’re the only one left. So stupid!_

-/-/-/-

He’s sitting in the bar, chugging down the sake when Minato takes a seat beside him.

“Don’t think I didn’t know you’ve henged yourself to look older,” Minato says.

Kakashi only grunts. _It’s not a henge when it’s your actual damned self,_ he bites back the thoughts and slams the cup down onto the table. Kakashi raises the bottle at the bartender, but Minato waves off the new bottle. 

“You’re done,” Minato tells him. “You’re thirteen, you shouldn’t be drinking.”

“Olddd enoough to kill, old enough to drrink-”

“Not about the legalities, more about your growing body.” 

Kakashi hasn’t been thirteen in a damn long time or even had someone that cared for him this way.

 _Sakura did,_ his traitorous mind reminds himself. Rin, Tsutsuji, Renge, Sakura. The girl with pink hair. 

He lets his head plonk onto the cold marble top, too tired to push Minato away as Minato slings him across his shoulder. “How in kami’s name is your henge this solid?” Minato grunts. Kakashi only chuckles, letting Minato drag him only. The fuzziness dragging down until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore.

-/-/-/-

_He wakes up and sees Tsutsuji braiding her pink hair beside him. Her lips twist in concentration as she reaches the bottom edges._

_“Good morning love.” He presses his lips on the small of her back and she yips like he knows she would._

_“Mou! Sakumo! I told you to stop that. Look at my braid now!” she huffs but doesn't stop him from pressing kisses up her spine._

_He feels the call of their bond stronger with each day. It's almost time._

_He runs his hands through her fine hair, unravelling the plait then deftly braiding it in the way he knows she loves. Tens and tens of reincarnations later and her favorite style has stayed the same all these times._

_“I love you,” he says._

_She cups his face, her green eyes scrutinizing his. “What's wrong sweetheart?”_

_“I just love you very much.” He tucks his face in the crook of her neck._

_Tsutsuji combs his hair with her hands, slinging her arm around his waist. “And I love you too, Sakumo,” she tells him, his name is a soft whisper on the wind._

_He pretends that his arms are not shaking. This time, this lifetime, he will protect her and they will be free. She will be free._

-/-/-/-

The dust motes are dancing in a light beam through the window when Kakashi wakes up. His head complains as he pushes himself up. 

Minato is sitting at the table, going through his paperwork. This scene is becoming a regular occurrence ever since Rin’s death - him getting dragged back by Minato, then waking up in his office as Minato works himself to death.

Oh. He’s not the only one grieving. _Of course Minato would grieve too. He, too, lost two teammates,_ Kakashi realises. Pressing his hand to his eyes, he tries to stop the throbbing in his head. Minato’s grief is not the same as his. It’ll never be the same as his. Two hundred odd years later and he’s still trying to break the curse; two hundred odd years later and he’s still falling in love with the same woman.

Some nights Kakashi hates Sakura so much. He hates her for putting him through this, for not listening to him, for putting herself in stupid risks. Some nights, Kakashi only remembers the warmth of her head in the crook of his arm, her feet tangled with his, the weight of her body on his, the sound of her soul singing next to his. 

That... is probably the only good thing that came out of this whole shithole.

Kakashi sighs and Minato looks up, raising an eyebrow.

“You alright?” Minato asks, his pen pauses in mid-writing. 

Kakashi stares blankly at him, at the blond man that he knew as a baby. He was called Sakumo then, or was he? With him changing his name every few decades, it’s hard to keep track. Before Sakumo, he was Hatake Kousaku. Yes, that sounds right. 

“Kakashi?” Minato pushes to his feet and walks over to him slowly and carefully. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He hates it when anyone tries to treat him gently like he’s glass. Kakashi is strong like metal. Tempered by the wind and rain, folded over and over again like the metal they use for katanas. Kakashi doesn’t remind himself of how easily his chakra tanto had broken in the second shinobi war.

“You were gone for five _consecutive_ anbu missions and then I was notified that you were using a henge to get wasted at a bar again. That’s not _fine_ , Kakashi.”

Kakashi shakes off Minato’s hand. He is made of metal, strong and cold. He has withstood tens and tens of Sakura’s deaths.

 _But not one by your hand,_ his mind snidely quips. 

“I will be,” he insists.

Then he feels it. There’s a small fire, burning and lighting the hollow feeling in his chest, calling his soul to hers. It’s Sakura again. Kakashi pulls a terse breath, the tight line on his shoulders melting. Another rebirth, another attempt. 

_Are you going to kill her again, Friend-killer?_

_No! I’m not a friend-killer!_

He remembers Rin impaled on his arm, her smile as her eyes closed, the blood dribbling from her lips.

_“Rin!”_

Kakashi forces himself to take slow breaths, uncaring for Minato’s concerned eyes. He’s been doing something wrong all this time. Letting himself create a clone to match Sakura’s reincarnation age, using a henge. Maybe he shouldn’t be a friend or a lover. Part of him clenches as Kakashi rolls the idea in his mind. To hold himself aloof from her, to not appreciate the brief moments he had with her.

Yes, he can do it. He will do it if it will save her.

-/-/-/-

_Kakashi can feel Kurama’s chakra pressing down on him as he leaps from roof to roof. After all the years of being sealed in a prison, he could guess that Kurama had the right to be angry, furious even, but still in his worst moments, there never had been that underlying strand of insanity._

_He leaps closer to the towering fox, hoping to reach out in some way._

_“My baby!” The woman sobs. “She’s not breathing. Akito, baby-”_

_Kakashi halts in his steps and jumps down, cursing his bleeding heart. With what limited medical diagnostic skill he has, he checks the baby. Chakra corruption, the civilian baby hadn’t stood a chance, not without a shinobi-_

_His thoughts falters, gaping at the sudden withdrawal. Cold fear clamps on him as he reaches out to his bond._

_Sakura!_

_Sakura was born to a civilian family, she wouldn’t have-_

_He takes a wavering step towards where Sakura’s soul beckons for him and tilts his head to Kurama, to Minato jumping back and forth to stop the destruction._

_Minato will be fine, his mind urges him. Minato is the Yellow Flash of Konoha, the fourth Hokage. He will be fine._

_Yea, why would he worry for Minato? The man’s like a cockroach._

_Kakashi continues jumping frantically to where Sakura’s soul beats, further and further away from Kurama, never once looking back._

-/-/-/-

 _Minato? Minato!_ He wakes with a gasp. Kakashi can still smell the smoke and dust even three days after the Kyuubi attack. Kurama hadn’t been this violent the last time he saw him. He leans his head against his knees with a sigh, but the Kurama he met back then hadn’t been locked away for years. 

What was the point of being the oldest ninja ever to walk the earth if he couldn’t so much as save his precious people? Everyone that he had grown to love had passed by him. Tsunade left, Dan died, Sakura died, Tobirama died, Hashirama died, Izuna died.

How pathetic. Kakashi remembers the little blond boy when he was called Sakumo. He had practically raised Minato and Minato in turn, after his untimely ‘demise’ tried to do same for him as Kakashi. 

Everyone died without him. Why is it never him?

“Hatake!”

The breath in his chest stills. 

_“Hatake! Hatake Noroyoshi.” He turns to see the angry pink haired woman glaring at him. “Where do you think you’re going?”_

“Hatake!” The brown haired boy shakes him. Namiashi Raidou, he thinks, is his name. 

“Namiashi?” he chokes out. Yes, there weren’t enough lodgings to go around after the attack so he was put to share a tent with Namiashi.

“Are you back?” Raidou asks. “You stopped breathing there for several minutes.”

“Yes,” he says through clenched teeth. He doesn’t explain and Raidou doesn’t ask. 

The barely-chuunin boy, instead hands him six onigiris and a small bowl of miso soup. “I got breakfast, figured you’d want them hot. Plus we need to fall in in about an hour.”

Wordlessly, Kakashi bites into the onigiri. The sour taste of the umeboshi fills his mouth.

_“Sakuuura! Umeboshi filling again?” he whines. “Your umeboshi is so sour!”_

_The pink-haired woman pinches his cheek. “I’d like to see you try to make umeboshi.”_

_“But honnney! I don’t like umeboshi!”_

_“But I do. And I’m the one cooking, so there.”_

Minato just died and he’s sitting here thinking about Sakura. Obito was right after all. He _is_ self-centered.

-/-/-/-

Kakashi tries not to think of the little four year-old girl with pink hair. He dodges the Kumo-nin’s blade, striking shurikens out of the air with his own. 

He remembers seeing Sakura flinching at the older girls’ words. Sakura had never been afraid of words.

Twisting his body in mid-air, Kakashi flashes through his hand seals, summoning his all-time favourite chidori. 

It had taken him in his Anbu uniform staring at the bullies to shoo them away and even then Sakura hadn’t been able to properly vocalise her thanks. It bothered him. Sakura without him around is different. She smiles less and laughs less.. Where had the fiery personality that Sakura always had, gone to?

He slips. The Kumo-nin’s face blooms into a gloating sneer as the chakra coated blade slides through Kakashi’s chest and out his back. Fatal, or would have been fatal had it not been for the curse. Kakashi chokes, using the shinobi’s momentarily lapse in concentration to pierce the chidori through his stomach. 

_120._

“Taichou!” He hears Yamato yell, landing beside him and flipping him over, trying desperately to channel medical chakra into his chest. “Taichou!” 

_80._

_I’ll be fine,_ he wants to say, but his heart has stopped beating. _It’ll mend and restart in a minute._ Except his lungs have stopped working and there’s no air to speak. Yamato is crying and he tries to lift his hand to ruffle his hair but he can’t.

_60._

“Did he-” Genma starts and stops. “We have to-”

Kakashi hears the leaves crunching beside him and his anbu mask is peeled off.

_20._

“Of course he wears his mask under his anbu mask,” Raidou laughs with a sob. “You know, we should just check if he has fish lips under that.”

_5._

Genma chokes back a half laugh. “You never know he might just come back to life just to-”

_1._

The chakra in his body circulates, shocking his heart back to life, and Kakashi opens his eyes with a gasp. 

“By the kage!” Raidou swears, his kunai is half raised when Kakashi jerks awake.

“What in the kami’s name was that!? You were dead!” Genma grabs onto him and pats him down. “What the fuck?”

“I see I’m preferred to be dead,” Kakashi wheezes out. 

“But you were dead!” Genma presses his finger on Kakashi’s veins.

“Well?” Raidou asks.

“Well… He is definitely alive,” Genma says reluctantly, releasing his wrist. “You were dead! He was, wasn’t he?”

“Well clearly I’m not.” He hasn’t died this close to anyone for a very long time, not since Tobirama and Tobirama was hardly a standard to set by. Would he have to kill them to protect his secret? Kakashi fiddles with his kunai pouch in pretense of re-arming himself with the used blades. They were… _are_ his friends. He can’t, he _won’t_ kill them just because it is easier for him. 

“The blade shredded your heart.” Yamato stares at him. “Unless there was a proper med-nin here, there was no chance of your survival at all. You should have died.”

 _And I wish I did,_ Kakashi doesn’t say. It’s not like he’s going to succeed anyway, not after the last hundred and one attempts on his life. It was how he as Sakumo had walked through the fields of dead casually and how he had brought his team back whole each time. Instead, he straightens his armor and looks at the dead shinobi with a curl of his lips. 

“Are you going to tell?” he asks the three, heart beating loudly in his ears. 

There is a pause, a shift of cloth, and Genma hooks his neck with an arm. “Are you stupid? Of course not.”

-/-/-/-

_“Don’t do this, Tsutsuji. Please,” Sakumo begs though he knows it would be futile. Sakura has never been one to sit on the sidelines. She is brazen and bright like the sun, never faltering in the face of danger. Truly, he loves her for that but he can’t lose her, not when they are only two years away from the curse from being broken._

_Tsutsuji, like all Sakura’s reincarnations, doesn’t give in. Wordlessly, she packs her mission bag and places her hand on his cheek. “Sakumo, I love you but you act like I’m not a capable ninja myself.” She kisses him and holds him tight. “It’s only two weeks, sweetheart. I’m an A rank ninja of my own right. I can handle an S rank mission.”_

_Sakumo hugs her fiercely, presses a kiss into her pink hair. “I love you,” he says in a strangled voice, knowing that it’ll probably be the last time he is saying that to her. He feels it in his bones, the tightening around his throat._

_“I love you too.” She smiles fondly at him, strokes his cheek then turns. “I’ll be back before you know it!”_

_He watches her swing her pack over her shoulders, watches her back fade into the distance and knows that he’s not going to let her die. Not this time._

-/-/-/-

_Sakumo cuts the first ninja down, his chakra sabre is a white streak in the darkness. He stands there panting, blood dripping down his sabre. He should be full of anger or grief, but he can’t find anything in him to dredge up. Her pink hair spills across the cold rock, her eyes gazing up, unseeing._

_He’s failed again._

_Sakumo chuckles. His shoulders shaking as his chuckles grow into a hollow laugh._

_Again and again and again._

_Somewhere in him knows that it was a hopeless quest to begin with. How long has he been trying? He can’t remember. He can’t remember his original name. The only thing that has stayed the same through the hundred of years has been his family name._

_There are no more emotions left in him. Loving a woman and having her die over and over again; he has done this for over two hundred years, he can’t do this another time._

_He drops in front of her body, closing her eyes, and presses a kiss on her bloodied temple. “Good night, sleep well.”_

-/-/-/-

“Kakashi, you are going to take Team seven and you _will_ pass them.” Hiruzen gives him a piercing stare.

Hiruzen giving him a straight-out order. Regardless of it being forty years later, Kakashi still can’t get over the inside joke. He’s getting old reminiscing things that happened decades ago. The sky is slowly flushed with streaks of red, painting the rooftops with a lucent glow. He has walked past every resident in this village, watched them grow from diapers to walking sticks. Is it fate that keeps bringing Sakura and him together, despite of him avoiding her like a plague? He hadn’t sought Sakura out when he stumbled upon her crying in the flower field, he hadn’t asked to be on the team that watched over Sakura, Naruto and the two clan heirs playing in the field. 

“Only if they pass my test,” Kakashi says, pretending to read his Icha Icha.

“Hatake Kakashi, you _will_ pass them.”

“Only if they pass my test,” he repeats, not backing down to Hiruzen’s rising killer intent. Tobirama had a stronger and heavier killer intent, but even Tobirama’s was no match to _hers._

“If you fail them-” Hiruzen purses his lips then amends his words. “If you fail Minato’s son, you’ll doom him to the genin corps or worse, as an academy dropout. Kakashi, you _don’t_ want to do that, do you?”

Personally, Kakashi thinks that that would be kinder to Naruto. Naruto can be apprenticed to someone who can give him one on one instruction, someone that is far kinder and more patient than he’ll ever be. Naruto could use that. He had seen the blond kid’s work and katas and it is a catastrophe.

“Only if they pass my test,” Kakashi insists and shunshins away in a flurry of leaves. _Only if they pass my test_ , he promises to himself. _And no one has_.

Team seven passes his test against all odds. 

-/-/-/-

This is fate, isn’t it? It hadn’t been the broody boy or the hyper kid that helped the team to pass, it had to be Sakura. Sakura, that he had been determined to let her languish in the genin corps, has spoilt all his plans _again_.

_“Renge, which part of the word stealth do you not understand?” Kama groans._

_“It wasn’t my fault that the daimyo was there! Him trying to seduce me and groping me wasn’t part of the plan!” she snipes back, throwing clothes at him. “Quickly now.”_

_Kama sighs, stripping and putting the clothes on. Then stops in horror at the butterflies embroidered on the edge. Not that he has an issue with crossdressers, he just isn’t one. “Renge… this is a crossdresser outfit.” He turns to Renge with a whine._

Kakashi sighs at the pink haired girl, in spite of the thump of joy of seeing her look at him. He’ll ignore her, make her as useless as possible so that the only job she can do will be as a paperwork ninja. That’s safe, she’ll be safe and sound in the village.

-/-/-/-

Naruto and Sasuke were supposed to protect Sakura in the Forest of the Death, instead they fell apart. Sakura had been close to death, far too close for his liking. 

_So it begins,_ he thinks. The start of the shinigami calling for Sakura, the battle for her life. Kakashi looks up into the twilight sky. The tiny prickles of stars spilling across its dark canvas. The view of the sky never changes. He shifts his attention to the tug of their bond as Sakura creeps closer and stares up the building at him. Her green eyes are almost as dark as Obito’s in the shadows. Kakashi tries not think of the little dark haired boy chasing after Konoha’s infamous sennin or the little blond boy that Minato had entrusted to him, that he failed to protect, too.

_Why does he always fail to protect?_

His heart trembles at losing Sakura again, at the possibility of the gaping emptiness where her bond resides. As long as he continues to refuse to train her, she’ll be useless as a shinobi and her only choice will be to stay in the village. 

“Kakashi-sensei,” she says, sitting beside him. 

Kakashi can feel the thrum of their bond beneath his skin, their souls mixing with their close approximate and he wonders if she can feel their bond like he can. It takes all his self-control to not sling his arms around her and press his cheek into her hair. He can’t. He _won’t._ He won’t fall in love with her again just to lose her again. Despite his determination, Kakashi knows it’s a futile effort, just like the way he first met Sakura in their very first life. He had been lost and helpless since their first meeting, Her brash attitude in spite of her station, her compassionate heart regardless of how the others had stomped over it carelessly. 

She shuffles beside him and he continues to pretend ignoring her. 

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura repeats, this time turning to face the sky. “I asked Tsunade-sama to teach me.”

 _No,_ he wants to scream. Tsunade is a front line medic and that means Sakura would be, too. She is supposed to be safe in the village where her worst wound would be a papercut. She is supposed to be so useless that she would be grounded.

She fidgets when he doesn’t reply, her head bowed, legs kicking against the wall. “I just… you know- want to be _useful._ ” Her voice cracks at the last word.

Kakashi laughs inwardly at his foolishness. Sakura had always been a front liner in every reincarnation, what in kami’s name did he think he could change this lifetime? He remembers her watching her back over and over again. He remembers Sakura wielding the naginata in their first lifetime. He fell in love with her because she never backed down, never afraid to put herself out there. She wouldn’t be Sakura if she allowed herself to be a kept woman, to be useless. 

“I’m not saying that you-”

“Sakura, it’s okay,” he tells her. “I was a bad teacher anyway. Godaime would be a good teacher for you.” Kakashi can already see it. Little Rin all grown up, past her miserable thirteen years. 

_He pulls his arm out of Rin’s torso, holding her bloodied body. He was supposed to protect her not kill her! How had he failed so miserably? Hadn’t he been getting her steadily older? Why? Why did she do this?_

_Her pink hair spills across his shoulder as he shifts to hold her across his arms. He takes a tremulous breath. “Good night, sleep well,” he whispers. Kakashi doesn’t cry. Not yet at least and not until a whole month later._

“You’ll be a great medic. ” He ruffles her hair and she sighs in relief. 

-/-/-/-

Kakashi regrets many things. He regrets killing Rin, not going to Kurama that night. He regrets being late to save Tsutsuji and walking away from Renge that night. His nightmares are filled with the memory of him walking away from Renge that would become her last night. Kakashi occasionally regrets letting Hashirama persuade him to join Konoha, but of all the things that he regrets, he regrets not mercy-killing Obito that day the most. A decision that haunts him through the last decade. How much pain Obito must have endured under that rock. Contrary to what Minato insists, Kakashi knows that he was not an adolescent filled with guilt that lead to his teammate’s death. He was apathetic and Kakashi can not forgive himself for that. 

He dodges a flying rock, sending a chidori and missing Obito. Whirling around, he catches Obito’s chains in time, tugging it towards him.

“Why am I not surprised you’re working on the traitor’s side,” Obito sneers. “After all you betrayed your own master, didn’t you Hatake Kakashi?” His lips curl upwards, smug and triumphant. “Or should I say, Hatake Masahiro?”

The name seems to reverberate through him, knocking him silly for a brief instant, ice dripping into his core as he registers the name that passed through Obito’s lips. _Masahiro._

_“We can’t let her kill anymore,” the man tells his older brother._

_“Hamura… do you really think killing Mother would be better?” He turns to Masahiro, his purple ringed eyes catching Masahiro’s dark grey ones. “Advise me, Masahiro. Would killing Mother be better?”_

_Masahiro bows, pressing his forehead against the ground. To ask the son of his master to kill the one he swore fealty would be treason, but how could he let his master continue her rampage?_

_“Ootsutsuki-sama-” he says carefully, feeling the weight of his words on his tongue. “If you do not stop her, there will be nothing left to save.”_

Kakashi swipes at Obito’s feet, only to slide through his dematerialized form. “I’m Hatake Kakashi.” Masahiro is a long forgotten past. Younger, more innocent, naive, all the things that Kakashi isn’t anymore.

“I’ll say. I never thought there would be anyone who lived as long as Zetsu, but then here you are! Masahiro- _kun_. You don’t really care, do you?” Obito teleports away, reappearing in front of Sakura and Kakashi leaps with a roar. 

_Sakura, Sakura, Sakura._

He pours more chakra into his feet, begging them to for once be there on time. Not Sakura! Sakura turns and he watches Obito raise the tanto in his hand.

_“I can’t cancel the curse, Masahiro. She did something to bind your souls together.” Hagoromo tells him apologetically. Even with all his powers and chakra, a curse laid by his mother is far too powerful for him to remove without severe consequences._

_“Then at least let my wife forget.”_

_“Dear!” Sakura grabs at him, however he pushes away, pressing his head against the ground. He only has her left to protect. He swore to protect her with his life and regardless of whether she was a warrior like he is, the fact that he allowed Ootsutsuki-sama to place the curse on her was inexcusable._

_“If she’s cursed to die over and over again, then I don’t want her to remember that,” Masahiro says._

_“No, dear, I won’t let you be the only one-”_

_“Be quiet and let me do the protecting for once,” he tells her. He turns back to Hagoromo. “Please.”_

Kakashi feels his sharingan tingling, feels the jerk of chakra as the tomoe spins round and round, morphing into a pinwheel. 

“Sakura!” Blood rims his sharingan eye and suddenly, Kakashi is in front of Sakura pushing her away, Obito’s tanto sliding through him.

“Kakashi!”

Kakashi grabs Obito by the wrist, refusing to let him dematerialize again. Kakashi can feel the blade jerk in his chest as Obito struggles to free himself. He calls up the last bit of his chakra channeling into his right arm.The chakra sparks into lightning, as he plunges his chidori into Obito’s chest. Obito gurgles, blood dribbling down his chin. He slumps against Kakashi as the light fades from his eyes. 

Obito is finally dead.

One regret crossed out. Kakashi’s legs tremble, folding beneath his weight. The rocks on the ground press into his bloodied shin. He hasn’t planned to die momentarily in front of Sakura. None of her reincarnations had ever taken that well. He grins a bloody smile at Sakura as she scampers over. “Well, that didn’t go as planned,” he says. 

She pulls the tanto out, stoppering his wound with her hands. The smell of medical chakra fills the air, Kakashi can feel his body giving out, from the shattered ribs he acquired earlier in the fight, from his chakra exhaustion and the nick on his heart. 

“Don’t cry, I’ll be okay,” he tells her, his hand curling around her wrist. 

“You’re so stupid! Why didn’t you just let me take the hit! I could have healed myself.” Her tears patter over his face. “I would have been fine.”

“I’ll be okay,” he tries to reassure her but chokes on his blood.

“Please, Kakashi. I _need_ you.” Her chest heaving, the green glow on her hands splutter out as her yin seal runs out of chakra. Sakura turns to the boys, too far to come in time for a chakra infusion even if they had any to spare. “Kami, anyone... _please-_ ” She crouches over him, one hand fisting his black shirt. The fight didn’t need her with Sasuke handling the last few Zetsus and Naruto sealing the black Zetsu away. 

“Sakura.” Yamato kneels beside her, his hand over hers, gently trying to pry her hands away from his black shirt. “He’ll be okay,” Yamato says the words that Kakashi can’t say because he’s dead for the moment.

“He’s _dead,_ ” she tells him with a sob crawling from her throat, her fingers trembling. “He can’t be _fine._ ”

“Sakura-chan…” He trails off, unsure how to explain it. “Kakashi-senpai… he can’t die. It’s a secret so you can’t tell anyone.”

She turns back to Kakashi, looking helplessly at him. “But he’s dead,” she whispers. 

“Give him a moment, he comes back after that.” 

And Kakashi does but it doesn’t stop Sakura from shrinking away from him.

-/-/-/-

Kakashi knows that Sakura had been trying to talk to him since the war ended. Probably to apologise, he assumes. Sakura’s reaction to him come back to live isn’t atypical, but still, it hurts. Somewhere along the way, the memory of her current reincarnation has been replaced with Rin flinching from him. No matter how many times he apologises to Rin’s grave, it doesn’t help dissipate the weight in his chest. 

Sakura is nineteen when she finally corners him or he gives up trying to avoid her, Kakashi isn’t very sure which it is. Her eyes are still as green as he remembers them to be, but there is a new scar running across her clavicle. Yamato had taken over team seven leadership now that he is the Hokage. There is relief that he no longer can hover around Sakura. Yamato has taken care of his team and her well in his absence. Whether she lives or dies, her fate would no longer rest solely on his shoulders. 

Sakura steps forward. “Kakashi…”

“Ahh… I think I left my stove on,” Kakashi says, but before he can flicker away, Sakura latches onto his arm.

“Kakashi! Please stop running from me!”

“I wasn’t running, I just left my stove on. It’d be a terrible accident if the building burnt down.” His eyes crease into an exaggerated smile. 

She deflates, her grip loosening slightly. “I- I just wanted to apologise,” Sakura says.

“Maa… what are you apologising for?” Kakashi guessed that she had felt sorry for her rejection.

“I didn’t mean- that time when you… when you… _died._ I didn’t mean to flinch.”

Kakashi chuckles. “It’s fine. It’s nothing.”

“Nothing? You call dying nothing? I thought I had lost you.” Her voice catches in a sob and he automatically reaches out to hold her, before freezing, his arm outstretched then drops back to his side. 

Uncertain as to how to respond to her words, Kakashi stays silent. The last few times she had lost him, they had been lovers. It was a simpler and more familiar route for him to comfort her then. This… or rather them being non-lovers isn’t something he knows how to navigate. They are student and teacher - him being an inept teacher, but still. He is not her boyfriend, lover, or husband. 

“Kakashi.” She looks up at him, the grip on his sleeve tightening. “I thought that I might have been wrong and I know that there’s an age gap,” Sakura laughs mirthlessly. “But I think… I think I’m in love with you.” 

“I... I just feel this _calling_ when I'm close to you, like my heart beating loudly when I'm close and when we touch.” She hurriedly adds on, holding tighter onto him, not wanting to let go. Kakashi stiffens. Unsure of how to respond, he gently removes her small, soft hand from his arm. 

Sakura leans to him, her hand resting on his arm. Kakashi can feel a frisson of anticipation sliding down his spine as she steps into his personal space and looks up at him. His eyes drop to her soft, pink lips. 

Feeling emboldened from his subtle eye movement, Sakura steps closer and puts a palm on his chest. Her voice is barely a whisper, “I feel like I'm home when I’m with you. Kakashi, do you… do you feel this way too about me?”

Kakashi sharply raises his head to catch her green eyes, his mouth is dry. He can feel the bond calling for her, begging to be rejoined and all he can think of is the number of times she had died in his arms. He pulls air that his lungs do not have, and replies hoarsely, "I'm sorry." Pulling his arm back, he raises a hand seal and disappears in a flurry of leaves, leaving her alone on the mountain top.

He can taste her hurt and confusion through the bond. Already he regrets his words, but he can't falter now. There is only two years left before he is free, before _they_ are free.

-/-/-/-

Kakashi sits on a tree beside Sakura’s kitchen window, among the blooming trees. Her twenty-first, finally. The party in her apartment is going on at full volume. In a few minutes, Sakura would finally pass her twenty-first birthday and he would be free of this curse, to finally live or die. For the centuries that he had lived, Kakashi hadn’t planned for what happens next. What does he do now that he’s free? Would she remember? Did he so much as want her to remember?

He swipes a glass of sake from the counter, emptying it and replacing it back from where Naruto had left it. 

“Are you not going to come in?” Yamato asks across the half-open window the moment Kakashi stands. Digging his hands into his pockets, Kakashi slouches his shoulders tiredly. He doesn’t reply because even without words Yamato already knows. 

“She’d like you to at least wish her happy birthday,” Yamato tries again and opens the window a little wider. 

“Tell her I said happy birthday in the case.” Not waiting for a reply, Kakashi wiggles his fingers and leaps off onto the road. He could go and wander, Kakashi muses. He could give the hat to Naruto, now that he is ready to become the Hokage. No need to worry about responsibilities and duties. He remembers the rice fields that his family used to grow, the thatched roofs that leaked constantly.

Kakashi pauses outside his door, staring at the crescent moon. He could leave, find out what happened to his family after they had left. Sliding through his seals, he sinks onto his bed, elbows digging into his thigh as he clasps his head. He thinks about finally seeing their gravestones, seeing people that were only loosely related to him by blood. No, he wouldn’t have anything there either. 

The bond hums louder with each passing second into an incandescent crescendo. It’s not the bond, Kakashi realises. It’s the curse that binds them. One to live forever and one to forever die young, never meeting in-between. And as it reaches an almost deafening pitch, the humming shatters, leaving him bereft of something Kakashi isn’t quite sure what except he is _free._

Then Sakura slips through his window, her eyes large, dilated and somewhat frantic.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she says, taking a step towards him. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me about the curse?” Her tone is accusatory and a flare of indignance shoots up.

“Why?” Kakashi throws his words back. “Would you have believed me? No, no you wouldn’t. And that’s fine, that had always been part of you. I wouldn’t force you to believe me as it wouldn’t have made a difference in the long run.” He knows for he had tried that before.

She kneels in front of him, placing a tentative hand on his knee. “Then why did you leave? Why didn’t you stay with me? You know how I felt. Masahiro, _tell me_.” Sakura lifts his head and peels his mask away, caressing his cheek with a thumb.

His eyes widened at her choice of name. Kakashi hadn’t counted on her remembering. All those deaths, those lifetimes… Yet he couldn’t help the relief loosening his shoulders. She remembered! He wasn’t alone anymore with the weight of the centuries. His lungs rattle, his fingers digging into his sheets. He didn’t need to hide from her anymore. 

“I couldn’t-” 

His shoulders tremble at his words. “I couldn’t-” He grips her arms, his shoulder shaking more as he tries to force the words out. “I couldn’t lose you again. I loved you so much that I wished I could hate you and stop trying. I _loved_ you for two hundred years, Sakura. Two hundred years.”

“I know,” she whispers and holds him tight. 

“I tried so hard. So hard to break free of the curse. Why? Why couldn’t I just leave you be? Why couldn’t I just _hate_ you?” 

Sakura cards her hand through his hair, rubbing soothing circles on his back. “Then do you still love me?”

He pulls from her, startled. 

“Do you?” she repeats when the silence lengthens. 

“For two hundreds years. _Always,”_ Kakashi tells her.

Sakura doesn’t hesitate. She pulls him close, dipping her head down to meet his lips. It’s soft and sweet, full of worship, love and hope. His fingers curl into her hair, her fingers tug at his lapels, holding him close.

They are panting when they draw apart, staring at each other wordlessly. Sakura cups his face and leans her forehead against his. 

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for setting us free.”

They savour the moment, the giddy feeling of being set free. “So what now?” Kakashi asks, because now that he is no longer bound, he can choose to leave - except he can’t imagine being without her by his side. 

“How about we start again?” Sakura laughs. “Hello, I’m Haruno Sakura. I like umeboshi, anko dumplings, my teammates and my friends. I hate anything spicy, traitors and am starting to hate ramen. I sometimes hate Sai too. My hobby is reading and filling out word puzzles.” She pauses at this, tilting towards him. her lips curling upwards, before continuing on quietly. “My dream is to make a particular silver haired shinobi fall in love with me. What about you?”

“Hello, I’m Hatake Kakashi. I like broiled saury, eggplants, my teammates and friends. I hate anything sweet or sour and traitors.” His eyes flicker down to her lips, his thumb rubbing circles on her cheek. “My hobby is following a pink haired kunoichi around and reading Icha Icha. My dream is... is to one day grow old with a particular pink haired kunoichi.”

“Wonder who this pink haired kunoichi is.” 

“Wonder who this silver haired shinobi is,” he whispers and captures her lips with his. 

**Author's Note:**

> A great thank you to my betas Denilmo, Crane and kiwigirl for talking me through this and forcing through my writer's block.


End file.
